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Mary’s Talk



“A New Expression of How to Love”
“An Example of Time and Triggering”
“Recognizing the Manifestation of Held Energy”

Saturday, October 26, 2024 (Group/Hinsdale, New Hampshire)

PARTICIPANTS: Mary (Michael), Ann (Vivette), Bonnie (Lyla), Christina (Melian), Debbie (Tamarra), Denise (Azura), Eric (Doren), John (Rrussell), Hazra (Lettecia), John (Lonn), Karen (Turell), Lynda (Ruther), Mark (Liam), Melissa (Leah), Morgonn (Sojee), Oliver (Amir), Phil (Paetre), Veronica (Amadis), and Yvonne (Zarla)

MARY: This talk today is gonna be kind of all over the place. It’s about what has happened since the last group session to now – and a lot has happened, and it’s crazy.

So, after the last group session, maybe already a lot of you already know I took a class for the summer, a quilting class to learn new techniques and new methods for piecing a quilt, and that’s where the first thing started. I started… Now, I’m gonna pause here, because this story involves three people, and this story that involves three people has been happening coinciding throughout this timeframe. The three people involved are here: me and Phil and Debbie.

I want to say something to begin with. I’m gonna say that this story also is very much about different kinds of love and how people love each other. But there’s trauma in this story too (chuckling).

So I started my class, and I was having difficulty with it. Debbie was coming down every two weeks to sit with the dogs while I went to my classes, and at the same time Phil started having some physical difficulties and Debbie was kind of going back and forth, and she was having difficulties down in Long Island where she’s been trying to organize stuff and get things moved out of her house down in Long Island to be able to get it to sell. So she was having her difficulties.

I was having all kinds of difficulties with my class, not because I couldn’t understand it but because I haven’t been in a class setting for 50 years, and it’s interesting how things follow you – or how you carry things and you don’t even know you’re carrying them, that you could be carrying something for 50 years and you just don’t even know that it’s there.

In our last group session I shared with you guys a little tiny bit about some stuff that went on in my childhood to lead into why I had food issues, and this is another throwback – which I didn’t realize – to when I was a kid, that I missed a lot of school because of the situation with my mother and the food thing. I was sick a lot, so I was out of school a lot, so then when I went back to school I was always behind. I was in Catholic school, and back then Catholic school had 52 kids in each class, and even though I had really nice nuns and none of them were jerks or mean, they didn’t have time to give any of the children any individual help because there were too many of us. So I was always feeling anxious that I was always behind and I was always trying to catch up.

It just so happened (chuckles) that when I got in this class, the teacher kept trying to situate me near her because I was so enthusiastic about it, but at the same time there was this other woman in the class that this was not her first rodeo. This was not her first class, she knew how to do it, and she was jumping ahead of everybody else. I was right next to her, and I didn’t even realize that that was influencing me in this way. School, when I was a kid, became not quite but almost as unsafe as home because of all that anxiety, so I started having all this anxiety and craziness. I just could not figure out… I was screwing up. Every time we would do something, I’d mess it up. I’d do it backwards, or I’d skip a step, or I would do something wrong, and I was getting frustrated. This went on for the first three classes, and these are five-hour classes (laughs). And I’m like, “This is just bad.”

By the third class I was a wreck, and was really upset and was ready to become a puddle after the class and was thinking, “I don’t know what’s going on, but I gotta figure this out. Something is wrong.” And I’m still not realizing that there’s some kinda trigger happening. I don’t know what’s happening; I just know I’m screwing up bad and I need to figure it out.

At the same time, (laughs) she’s like struggling with her ex-husband, Phil’s getting sick and that’s not good, so the three of us are like not doing very good. After the third class I decided to talk about it and try and figure out what was happening and what was I doing, and I did. I talked about it for a little while, and I realized, “Oh! This is what I used to feel when I was a kid, all the time!” And it was such a blatant example of how your body doesn’t distinguish time, which I didn’t really think about before. I mean, you know, I think about those things intellectually, but I didn’t really like think about it in a real-time experience, and that WAS a real-time experience.

The interesting thing for me about SOME – not all, SOME – of these experiences is that when I get it, when I see what I’m doing, it breaks and it goes away, and it just stops. That doesn’t happen all the time, but it does happen a lot of times. So it did! It just poof!... went away, and the rest of my classes were amazing. My teacher was like, “These classes are too easy for you, you need to do something more challenging, and I’m gonna get with you and give you some more challenging things to do because this is just too easy.” I said, “Okay, that’s great!” Now I’m thinking that I’m good.

Right around the same time (laughs) that THAT was going on, after I had this breakthrough, I was in the woods walking with the dogs, and I was stretching and didn’t think about anything, didn’t feel anything, and that evening I was in just unbelievable pain and could not understand what was going on. A couple days later I called the doctor and went in to see him, and that’s when this whole thing with my body started.

Okay. Now; a little bit of a fill-in here is that during that time, I was feeling very… (pause) close to and compassionate to Phil. He was doing trauma sessions in person, and I was feeling a lot of caring and loving feelings towards him in this struggle that he was going through. And he was having his accomplishments too – he quit smoking, and that was good, so things were really… all three of us were kind of paralleling but also being very supportive to each other. And I was learning, I think, a new expression of how to love people that I’ve not really experienced before, and feeling also a camaraderie in our newly recognized identities about, you know, being nonbinary, so that was kind of a bond thing too.

And in the meantime also, Debbie was becoming very empowered in relation to her ex-husband and not letting him beat her down like crazy, but another thing was happening. She and I were getting closer and closer and closer and becoming… (pause) very intimate. Not in a sexual way, so don’t anybody go in that direction, but just in a very real love that I’ve never experienced before. I’ve never in my life experienced this kind of intimacy with someone and this kind of love with someone that is completely different.

And what happened was, I had already started this whole thing with my body, which is fascinating that we do things before we know that we’re doing them and before we realize what’s going on. Phil had started getting sicker with his things; I started creating this physical thing that just started getting worse and worse and worse. It was going down my right leg and it was affecting from my back to my right leg and making me at times not being able to walk, and then it started with the other leg. And I just recently – speaking of Nuno (chuckling) – somebody shared not his most recent session but the one before that with me, and I started thinking about held energy, and I started to realize I’ve been holding energy big time, and that’s probably – well, it’s not probably, it IS what has been creating this situation, because it’s not like me. I’m not the type of person that is gonna just like clam up and not talk and not say what I think and feel and not be me, and I’ve been doing that since pretty much the beginning of the summer.

And the reason I was doing it was because I was REALLY concerned about Phil. I was concerned about his health, I was feeling this very strong love for him and that I didn’t want anything to hurt him. So I went in a direction of trying to protect him by crippling myself, which I’m literally doing, and I just realized, “Oh, this is not helpful to anybody. This isn’t helping me, it’s not helping him, it’s not helping Debbie.” And Debbie and I have had many conversations about this, in depth, and we’re both on the same page. Both of us love each other, both of us love Phil, but they’re different kinds of love. It doesn't mean one is bigger than the other; they’re just different, and being able to not hold onto it, being able to share it, is… such a weight off, which I think will help me to be able to be successful next month when I start all of these different things to address to this physical situation with the chiropractor and the physical therapist and the neurosurgeon and all of that. I think that this is opening a door to make that more successful.

And what is so beautiful about all of this is that it really is a love story all the way around. That’s what’s so wonderful about it, is that I know for myself I’ve never experienced this kind of love, ever. I know for me and Deb that this is something brand new for both of us. I also know that Phil has played a huge part in this in being… one of the most supportive people and the most… caring and generous people to pull it together, which is astounding. It’s really pretty amazing, and it’s something that is so beautiful that there really aren’t words to really describe what the experience is.

I was so afraid to share. I was afraid of hurting people, I was afraid of overstepping, I was afraid of “What if I’m wrong?” I was afraid of so many things because I’ve never experienced this before. It was really scary, and of course the dead guy stepped in and helped out with some of that (laughs).

It's been a fascinating experience to observe in real time how people can not actually know what they’re doing and be doing it, and be stepping into directions and situations and experiences and relationships and not even know that they’re DOING it until it’s done, until it’s there. And also be creating, you know, physical things and not know what THOSE are about either, until it’s already blown up and then there it is.

But it’s also not a black-and-white thing. It’s not about pushing things away or pulling things toward. It’s not about pulling people towards me and having my little tribe and protecting them; it’s not about that. And it’s not about pushing away physical things that we’ve created. They will go in the direction that they go in, and I’m not so afraid of that either anymore.

It was pretty scary about a month ago, but, I mean, the prospect with this going down both my legs that, you know, there’s… there’s that possibility in the back of my head, “Oh great, I’m gonna cripple myself to the point that I won’t be able to walk.” Even that doesn’t scare me as much. Not that it doesn’t scare me at all (laughs), but it doesn’t scare me as much as it did a month ago, and more in a direction of “It’s all okay. It’s all gonna be what it’s gonna be, and it already IS.” And that’s the most exciting part of all of it – it already IS what it is, and it’s astounding how you can go in a direction of discovering, AT ANY AGE, types of love that you never knew existed.

And I think that what that has also shown me is that regardless of what position people are in or what relationships they’re in, it’s so important to appreciate them and to really… hold onto them in a way that’s genuine and to not be afraid – which is a big one.

But I’d say it is a beautiful life. I’m really, really, REALLY happy, and I’m really happy that I got to share this with all of you, and [to Phil and Debbie] I’m really happy for both of you.

So that would be what happened on MY summer (laughter), which is blowing up my world (laughs). But it’s been… This has been the most whirlwind summer and fall, it’s just been like bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing, all of these pins just falling down into one another but in such an amazing way and such an amazing story.

I’ll tell ya, my life just doesn’t stop getting interesting. (Group laughter) It just keeps on going (laughs), and I never thought I’d make it to this age!

ANN: Surprise, surprise!

MARY: I know! And here I am not only at this age but going into a whole new chapter.

ANN: I guess you’re not dead yet with all these surprises!

MARY: I would say no. (Group laughter, clapping, and words of love and affirmation within the group)

DENISE: Pass the tissue box!

PHIL: And I learned so much about myself. I had no idea about my past, and the health issues that I did have. I called it a snapshot. It was a snapshot in time, and it was a culmination of things that I had built over my whole life. It didn’t just happen overnight and didn’t happen over a winter or anything like that.

MARY: Right.

PHIL: And that’s really been my saving grace, and [inaudible], and I wrote a small column called “Physical Housekeeping.” Now I get to clean up the physical manifestations of what I created over my lifetime, because I was able to find the reasons for it. And you were kind and you were… (emotionally) very kind. I feel very much the same.

MARK: Cool!

PHIL: Well, thank you.

MARY: You are very, very welcome. Yeah, it’s been pretty cool. (Chuckles)

MARK: It sounds like it.

MARY: It has been pretty cool – pretty great. (Laughs)

ANN: Well, I’m just feelin’ a whole lotta love goin’ around! (Group laughter)

MARY: It’s just FLYIN’ … It’s like okay, it’s just love cloud everywhere, you know. I feel like I’m being able to be in the ‘60s at the age that I wasn’t. (Group laughter) I was a little bit too young (laughs), but now I can be a love child - in the ‘70s. (Group laughter)

DEBBIE: You’re never too old to be a love child.

MARY: There you go!

It’s so interesting too, you know. I’ve always looked at people that… like Stella, who met Benito when she was 71 or 72, and now they’re married and they’re traveling around Mexico and all this stuff. I have been fortunate to be able to interact with, like, a BUNCH of people that are older and then they meet someone older in life and they have this wonderful relationship and they’re like totally in love, and it’s wonderful.

And I’ve always thought that was so cool. I’ve always thought, “That’s so beautiful, that people can do that.” That they’re not “done” at any age, and they still find each other somehow, and it’s just fascinating to me and I’ve always thought it was the most amazing and wonderful thing.

(Inaudible crosstalk)

So, I would say that you guys can do it too!

DEBBIE: Highly recommended.

MARY: Mm-hm, mm-hm. Yeah, highly. I think this is definitely a good one. (Laughs) It’s a good one to follow.

(Mary’s talk ends after 30 minutes)

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